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Bezos: In Future, Heavy Manufacturing Will Take Place in Space

Blue Origin’s New Shepard Team is the winner of Aviation Week’s 60th Annual Space Laureate. New Shepard is only the first step in fulfilling Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos’ vision of using ever larger reusable rockets to send an entire economy into Earth orbit and beyond. Following the Laureate Award presentations held at Washington’s National Building Museum on March 2, Bezos talked to Aviation Week & Space Technology Editor-in-Chief Joe Anselmo and the audience at the awards dinner about the importance of expanding into the solar system.

Admittedly I didn't watch the video, not yet anyway. But I imagine that as space industries and colonies come into being, a significant portion of it won't need to come back to earth. It will be for moon colonies, asteroid mining, etc.

The concept is not as inefficient as you suggest. The highest cost process is to boost earth-based materials to orbit .. from there to the moon is easy and cheap. So you ship the machines to the moon that can utilize moon mineral resources to build larger structures and products, either to stay on the moon or to be launched towards Earth or another planet, needing only to overcome gravity that is one sixth that of Earth.

With 3D printing, and the ability to extract metals and silicates from the lunar crust, it can be a very efficient process cycle.

This isn't something we'll be doing in the next decade .. but in the next 50 years, sure, I expect it.

And the overriding ethos that Bezos describes is none other than an old real estate phrase: "Highest and best use". The lush, green, airy and watery Earth is at its highest and best value as a great place for humans to live. The Moon and other planets in our solar system that do not have an atmosphere to pollute, water to pollute, and animal and plant species to be impacted is a better "industrial zone", at least for those products that can be produced in such environments. I'm not suggesting we purposely pollute other planets, but at least we would not be withdrawing highly productive earthian environments for industrial purposes, as we do today.

This is the first time I have heard Bezos speak. Quite inspirational to hear about the Jewel of a planet we call home and his vision for it. However, his vision is long term, hundreds of years from now. My only fear is that by that time, we will have destroyed our jewel by over-population and over-exploitation of our limited resources such as petroleum. A huge number of species will be extinct and our beautiful forests (like the Amazon) will be gone. Oceans, lakes and rivers will be polluted beyond repair. That is unless we take care of these problems NOW! So over the short term, we need people like Bezos to try and preserve our planet for future generations. For example, billionaires like him can purchase habitats like parts of the Amazon rain forest and preserve them so that they cannot be exploited and destroyed. They can work to establish reserves for endangered animal species such as elephants and whales. That is money well spent and only they can do it.

I like his deliberative approach and his vision of going to Moon first before Mars. His thinking on this matter is more coherent than Elon's. All power to Blue Origin. Hope it builds the New Glenn sooner than later.

If we are serious about space, we need to build a serious space craft and this has to be built in orbit from prefabricated parts. These types of ships have to be capable of evolving as technology advances. They must be large enough to provide a real habitat for extended and short voyages, What we are currently doing is not adequate for serious space work. We did the space variety of Spirit of St. of St. Louis in the 60's. Now we need to build from there with orders of magnitude initiatives.

A Lunar Space Elevator [LSE] can be built today from existing commercial polymers; manufactured, launched and deployed for less than $2B. A prototype weighing 48 tons with 100 kg payload can be launched by 3 Falcon-Heavy's, and will pay for itself in 50 sample return cycles. It reduces the cost of soft landing on the Moon at least threefold, and sample return at least ninefold. Many benefits would arise. A near side LSE can mine valuable resources and ship to market in cislunar space, LEO and Earth’s surface. A far-side LSE can support a super sensitive radio astronomy facility.

I once made a similar comment, but ultimately realized that space elevators depend on the planet's rotation to work, because they're basically orbital vehicles, and their orbital velocity has to match their ground speed. With Earth that's marginally possible because of its relatively fast rotation (24 hr period), and even then the full elevator mechanism has to extend well beyond geostationary orbit, but the moon only rotates once per month. Am I missing something?
As far as Bezos is concerned, count me in as a fan. He struck me as someone with his head in the stars, but his feet firmly on the ground.

Folks are going to spend gadzillions of dollars to send steel mills into orbit. They are going to spend gadzillons more to ship biglyest quality iron ore up to it. Of course coal will be boosted from Lexington, Kentucky's Donald Trump Astroexport.

Lord Dark Helmet's industrial ship " Mega Maid," will be used to vacuum up oxygen from the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system to supply the orbital steel mill's Blastoff Furnaces.

Then led by Lone Starr, Vespa, Dot, and the residents of San Jose will fly off to colonize Gilligan's Planet around Alpha Centauri.

All will be happy and high as they are smoking some awesome stuff in Silicon Valley. So they will live happily foreever after.

Next weeks on Billionaire With Delusions of Grandeur, W. Heath Robinson, founder of TwaddaLobotomy.com, will announce his invention of the space ship Rube Goldberg with the first extragalactic drive.

I invented a fusion space drive that can take us to the stars, but then I woke up. I tried really hard not to wake up and memorize the process, but it only remains a shadow of a memory. Its to bad Ray Bradbury isn't around today, he would have had some fun with this.

The simple problem is the cost per pound to put infrastructure in space. It is the same reason we use container ships and rail to transport much of the world's good. The allowable shipping cost per pound is limited by market forces.
NASA claims Today, it costs $10,000 to put a pound of payload in Earth orbit. NASA's goal is to reduce the cost of getting to space to hundreds of dollars per pound within 25 years and tens of dollars per pound within 40 years.
Then, you have to maneuver and land those materials on the moon or wherever they will be used.
Hopefully, NASA will stay away from funding these types of pipe dreams and let Bezos and Branson and others will easy money to spend their money. Elon Musk would want government subsidies for exploratory efforts.

One thing that would really help us build up real infrastructure beyond LEO (L1/Moon/Mars) would be a hyper efficient space tug (SEP or Vasimir?). If we were going to build a lunar base, it would be just fine taking 6-9 months to accelerate unmanned lunar landers out of earth orbit. If you can launch 30-50 MT modules on F9H or New Glenn with a tug attached you can wait and send the crew later on the big and expensive but man-rated SLS. Same approach can be used for an L1 station. This is one area NASA can lead while commercial space focuses on launch to LEO.

This is a more of a pipe dream than a well thought out plan. I don't think Bezos realizes the effort (and risk) involved when you start talking resources, manufacturing and building in space. Just look at the Space Shuttle program as an example. A lot of effort went into doing even the smallest assembly and repair in space. There's a big difference between sitting in the seat on a prescribed travel trajectory vs deciding your'e going to park up there and do actual work for an extended period of time. I don't know if it's ignorance on Bezos' part or hubris - or both.

It sure makes for great dreamy speeches and getting all the non engineering folks excited.

I stopped reading Popular Science for this very reason. Prominent people who make broad claims about the future that could not possibly come into effect. How is he going to get the tons of raw material up there in the first place? By levitation? Beaming it up, like Scotty did? Brain power? Use up every last speck of hydrocarbon fuels remaining in the ground? Bezos may be good at what he does, but he should refrain from opening his mouth and showing us that he is capable of talking pure unadulterated shyte.

Bezos suffers from the same megalomania as Musk. They have amassed so much wealth that they need to be breathtaking pioneers.

As for the earth being unable to generate enough power from solar panels, I'm confident that we'll get solid, safe, nuclear fusion reactors before his supposed need to go to the solar system for resources.

I think his idea of heavy manufacturing on the moon would be in support of interplanetary missions (e.g. Mars). I don't see any reason to incur the costs and risks of any manned (or womanned) mission to Mars. I think the money would be far better spent exploring our oceans and sea floors.

The ratio of payload to launch vehicle is almost unchanged since the start of space exploration. About 3-5 percent. If you want to put 1 million pounds into orbit, the launch vehicle will weigh about 20-33 million pounds. We don't have a single rocket that can orbit that much. Maybe with a reliable, cheap reusable rocket, that can be improved a little. The largest part of the weight is fuel.
There is no such thing as a space elevator. Never was, never will be. We are stuck here, on good old earth, until we destroy it or fix it. Besides, we have screwed up our planet enough, why do we want to do the same to other planets, even if we could?

Thinking with your nose firmly attached to the box. If you do indeed want to put 1 million pounds into orbit, why does it have to be in one do,I'd mass? Why not break it down into say 10,000 pound lots? As to the elevator, a thousand years ago they would have said exactly the same thing regarding countless products that we take for granted today.

How will he get the manufactured stuff down from orbit? The premise might be flawed as some of what is manufactured will never be intended to come down to Earth. But, by the time the tech is there to manufacture in space, the tech will also be there to 3d print huge heat shields out of some of the metals and other materials found in asteroids, as additive manufacturing will be the backbone of orbital manufacturing.

"Every human venture and its visionary leader that ever succeeded was panned and mercilessly mocked by the un-achieving cynics and anklebiters of their time."
- DTRT

Too little you know history and it's constituency, humanity.

There was this guy, a salesman for a bottle cap company. It was the time of the Panic of '93. The worst financial disaster of the late 19th century. Yet it was in that bleak decade which was the death knell of the Gilded Age that this guy realized the product he sold was simply a thrown away.

This led him to realize the viability of another potential throw-away product. He recognized the possible application of automated production. He developed the product and the means of production and became very rich.

He was also a Utopian Socialist. He dreamed of moving everyone in the USA to a single huge planned city called Metropolis. The city would be run by a single corporation owned by the people of the USA. It was to be powered by a vast hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls. In 1894 he put forth his plan in a book, "The Human Drift." His greatest desire was to provide humanity a socialist Utopia as in Edward Bellamy's best selling "Looking Backward: 2000–1887."

Years later as his patent expired he cashed out and spent his life investing in real estate and dreaming of "A World Corporation" and later "A People's Corporation." His product is in many guises still with us.

Though he was never totally impoverished he lost much in the Great Depression. He never repeated the brilliant clarity of his vision for a throw away product which met a common need.

This Utopian Socialist who made a bundle in business and failed utterly in his vision for humanity was King C. Gillette.

Curiously his palatial ranch, now a public park, was used about a decade ago in the Reality TV show "The Biggest Loser."

There is little evidence that having a good idea for a business makes one a Prophet of Humanities Future DTRT, and much to the contrary.

One industrialist who's great invention was not the manufacturing line, or the automobile, but the working wage which led to the middle class America now so nostalgically yearned for; was Henry Ford. He also had a vision of a utopian city and it's ruins were in the news recently. See: Fordlândia.

Walt Disney had a vision of the city of the Future and started the prototype, a "real city that would 'never cease to be a blueprint of the future," in Florida. Fortunately the amusement park next door worked because the The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow failed.

Just hold your breath waiting for Jeff Bezos's Vast Industries in the Sky.

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